Cultural Exchange - 1

“Wake up dweeb,” a scratchy voice yells. You jolt up from the relative comfort of your bedding and roll onto the hard wooden floor. Gilda lets out a huff of irritation as you fumble your way out of the tangled fabric.

“Holy crap dude, a guy your size shouldn’t be getting trapped like that,” she complained, ripping through it with her yellow talons. A hand bursts through, and you pull away the now tattered quilt.

“Thank you, but did you really need to ruin the sheets?” you mutter. You tower over her being large by human standards, but this little catbird still manages to intimidate you on a regular basis. She’s at crotch height and she has sharp claws, that’s all you needed to know before trying to get on her good side.

“Did you really need to volunteer for this cultural exchange thing?” she fires back rapping a claw impatiently against the floor.

“I didn’t volunteer you know, they forced me to come here.” You step to the small dresser and open one of the drawers, pulling out a fresh pair of trousers. The drawer above contains shirts of all colours and shapes, but you decide to wear a simple white shirt. You grab a black jacket from the banister of the bed and slip on your dirty, old trainers.

It’s true. Being the only human in Equestria, you of course are dragged around different countries like a damn sideshow attraction. A mild curiosity to most, a scary hairless monkey to many others. Some world leaders, headed by that blasted white horse, insisted that you travel around the place and find somewhere that fits you the best.

The ultimate goal being to find you a home, or at least a place to stay and tolerate. So far the search has been fruitless, Equestria was a bit too kid friendly for your tastes, Minotauria was filled with hyper aggressive meatheads and udder tits and one of the many Zebra states was boring and seemingly devoid of any modern comforts.

You shudder as you remember all of the farm work you did.

At first you thought it was a sweet deal, getting to travel around the world in one big holiday. But the reality was much different and the novelty started to wear thin pretty soon after. The people who put you up generally felt the same. Now there’s an overriding need to get this done as quickly as possible.

The Griffon Empire has been a pretty sweet joint so far. It manages to combine to mild weather of Minotauria, the natural beauty of the Zebra state, and has all of the technology and development of Equestria without the sickeningly sweet décor.

The purple tipped lioness yawns as if she’s heard the story a thousand times before. You make your way to the door and look back, “Come on then, you were trying to pull me out the door a minute ago.” She rolls her golden eyes and hops to her feet, brushing past you like the arrogant little shit she is.

 The latest host to grace your presence, Gilda. She’s an ice queen if you’ve ever met one. The others liked to grin and bear it, but Gilda made no secret of her seemingly open disdain for you. She insulted, she belittled, and she tried to piss you off at every presented opportunity. If there was one thing she was good at, it was being a tour guide to your lazy ass.

Her house was one of the few in the town with a spare room, as Griffons (apparently) place great importance on family. Gilda struck you as the loner type, so it was no surprise to you that she didn’t live with anybody else. When asked she just said she was waiting for the right guy to come along. According to her, crass, loud and willing to put up with her are the three main qualities.

You make your way down the stairs and into the main floor of the house. The stairs come out into a cosy looking living area, to the left through an archway is the combined kitchen and dining area. To the right is the front door and window that allows some natural light into the otherwise dark room.

It’s time to begin the daily ritual, you declare in your mind as you shuffle into the kitchen. Gilda is already rooting through her fridge for her favourite morning meal. You move past her and open the cupboards, pulling out a frying pan and some other pieces of cutlery. Looking to the left you switch on the cooker and place the pan onto it. Finally you pull out the oil that you’ll need once Gilda finds the…

“Bacon!” she declares waving around a plastic packet. Every morning without fail, she does the same thing. You sigh and grab it from her talons, ripping open the flimsy material. A healthy squirt of oil into the pan gets things sizzling. You pull the raw strips from the packet and slap them down into the pan, inhaling the smell.

Gilda hovers over your shoulder the entire time. “What are you doing?” you ask.

Gilda backs off and her feathers ruffle slightly. “Just making sure you’re doing it right dweeb.” You aren’t entirely convinced, but you decide to save the fighting for later and keep a close eye of the meat. Gilda floats around the kitchen, grabbing some bread from the bread bin and buttering it up. It doesn’t take long for the bacon to be done.

You grab two plates and assemble two pairs of sandwiches. You slide them both onto the table and you take a seat, Gilda following close behind with a glass of water. You both sit down and eat them in silence, Gilda inhaling her food and eating like a ravenous eagle. Once you’re both done you take the plates to the sink and give them a quick wash, leaving them on the rack to dry.

“What’s on the agenda today?” you ask sitting back down at the table.

Gilda’s face lights up with a sly smile, “Hunting day! We’re going down to the forest to catch ourselves some fresh meat.”

You’ve been to one of these hunts before. You didn’t participate for obvious reasons, but griffons still enjoy catching their own food despite the recent move towards traditional farming techniques.

It serves a lot of cultural purposes too. Traditionally it’s a way for griffons to attract a mate by demonstrating their hunting prowess; but it’s also a coming of age ceremony for young griffons. Gilda said that sometimes it would be done for that purpose, but that as a method of meeting a mate it is rarely done anymore.

Still, it serves as a good form of entertainment for the weekends and is a good way to keep in shape. Not that you can participate anyway, with no kind of natural weaponry attached to the ends of your fingers. You’ve already been down with Gilda a few times, this being the third. You normally end up sat at the base camp waiting for everybody to come back.

With a sigh you rise from the wooden chair and follow Gilda to the door, her tail swishing from side to side with excitement. You look away and cough to yourself as her lower lips flash themselves at you. She looks back and makes eye contact, you tense up and shrug hoping that she doesn’t notice how hard you’re sweating. If she found out you saw that, she’d probably gut you. She gives you an unamused glare and rolls her eyes, so she doesn’t seem to have noticed. Another sigh, but this one of relief.

You head out into the town centre. Gilda had a house that was pretty close to the middle of the action, meaning it was only a stone’s throw away from the weekend market and other little amenities like the local watering hole, the red feather. Some of the other griffons passing by give you a friendly wave, which you return. You’ve made plenty of friends drinking each other under the table.

Gilda isn’t really into making friends and often diminishes your efforts with derision and questioning. Her behaviour tells you that she was never the sociable type. You head south through many different roads, one difference between this town and the ones you’ve stayed in before is how dense everything is. No space is wasted, everything’s laid out with function and efficiency in mind which you like. Ponyville was murder, having most of the houses spaced out across miles of empty field.

It didn’t help that your host wanted you to help haul stuff to their own market. Your shoulders still feel sore from pulling that wooden cart every day, and you swear that you still have those red marks from the harness you used. You crack your shoulders causing Gilda to jump a little.

“Stop doing that dweeb, it freaks me out,” she complains in her usual scratchy, angry tone.

“What? You’ve never cracked a few bones in the morning before?” you ask picking up the pace to walk beside her.

“I don’t do it when others are around. It’s rude.”

“Oh, that’s rude but not everything else you do and say huh?”

Gilda glares at you and paces ahead again. You chuckle to yourself and fall back behind her. The houses soon start to thin out as you reach the edge of town, the stone roads turning into dusty brown dirt. You cough as some of it works its way down your throat. Must be nice having a beak that you can clamp shut.

Gilda ignores your plight and continues on towards a forest to the south-east. Tall alpine trees shoot off into the clear spring skies. It’s a very pretty looking place and reminds you a lot of Earth. Out beyond the thick treeline you can see the tall mountains that surround the southern border of the Empire, a useful natural defence against land faring armies. Also a good place to go skiing.

You work your way through the trees, hopping over overturned logs and pushing your way past intrusive branches. You both enter into a circular clearing around fifteen meters across, where a large camp has been set up. Various leather structures, like tents and booths have been set up for all kinds of purposes.

To the left is the tanning racks, where already various animal skins have been left out to dry. Just past it is the cooking booth for the impatient ones, with a large table in front of it for griffons to sit on and socialise. On the other side there’s a larger tent for the event organizers and a small militia in case somebody gets into any serious trouble.

The rest of the space has been left relatively clear due to just how many griffons come down here every weekend. The place is packed. “I hate it when it’s busy, every other week,” Gilda complains.

“Be careful, you might make some friends,” you joke brushing past her and b-lining to the table. Sat there are some regulars from the bar, who give you a jovial greeting and invite you to sit down and have a drink with them. You aren’t able to actually go out and hunt, so you accept the offer. A large mug of strong beer is placed in front of you. You grip the handle and chug it down to its halfway point.
The other guys laugh and pat you on the back. It’s strong by griffon standards, but your liver is much better than theirs, meaning you’ve beaten them at their own game several times by default. On the downside of things, you end up paying much more of your already meagre stipend trying to get wasted.

Gilda approaches, causing some catcalls to be sent her way. She grips your shoulder as you polish off your first drink of the day.

“Already dweeb?”

“Hey, I need to get started early to catch up with these guys,” you explain motioning to a currently vomiting Harold.

“Do you really want to? I was thinking of taking you out for once and showing you how we do it.”

You drop the mug back of the table and twist in your seat to face Gilda. “Sounds great, when are we setting out?”

“Now, no point in waiting,” She waves you along with a wing and makes you follow her to the big tent. Inside there’s another, much larger griffon sat at a small desk. Gilda waltzes up and grabs a quill, scribbling down her name on a piece of paper. “We’re going out.”
“You’re bringing the human with you?” he asks in a booming voice.

“Well he gets bored sat in the camp all day, and I am meant to be showing him everything that goes on around here.”

“Be careful, the both of you.” He brings out two pairs of green, sleeveless jackets. On the front is a large purple crystal that glows softly in the shade. Gilda takes the smaller one while you take the largest they have.

Slipping it on you realize the purpose, as Gilda’s own jacket lights up in a vivid blue colour making her easily visible. Noticing your gaze Gilda takes it upon herself to explain. “Visibility jackets, to make sure everybody doesn’t end up killing each other out there.” You both leave the tent and you notice that you can see the shape of the jackets through the walls of the tents and stands.

“Yeah, it’s super lame. It’s a rule the government introduced recently after a bunch of griffons killed each other in a dumb fight. Helps the local authority take no liability in situations like that too, they’re scared of getting sued by the families,” Gilda explains. “It was big news for a while a few years ago.”

“I suppose people complained about it.”

“Of course they did, they said it ruined the purity of the hunt or some other crap. I’d rather not get minced by some blind idiot acting on instinct to be honest. Most griffons come out here to get some free food anyway, so they don’t care all that much.”

You exit the clearing and start heading deeper into the forest. “Alright dweeb, let me lay out some ground rules. Don’t follow too closely behind me, keep your big mouth shut, and try not to annoy the other dudes out here, they’re not as understanding as me.”

You nod and enact immediate caution, zipping your mouth closed. Gilda scoffs at your little mime imitation, “Such a dweeb.” She stops suddenly, and looks at something far off into the distance. Spreading her wings she shoots off like a rocket, leaving you in the dust. You chase after her, the jacket making it easy to keep track of where she’s heading.

It’s difficult to run at full speed with all of the shit that’s in your way and soon you lose sight of Gilda, even with the visibility jacket supposedly lighting her up. Damn it, you’ve lost her. You sit down on the dirty ground and try to regain your breath. You could have done without the running today, especially after chugging a full mug of alcohol.

A small voice in your mind yells at you, you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and the one griffon who knows where to go has just ditched you in a sudden display of instinctual hunting. You groan and collapse onto your back, looking up through the canopy. You wait for five minutes hoping that she’ll come back, but it’s a fruitless effort.

With a grunt you stand back up, and turn back. You were going straight for most of your walk, so it shouldn’t be a huge bother to find your way out of the forest. You can hear the sound of small animals rustling through the underbrush, and the occasional squawk of a griffon finding its prey in the distance. It’s kind of unsettling, but as long as you have the jacket on you should be okay.

You wonder where Gilda has run off to. She must have seen something pretty amazing to rush off like that in such a hurry. Maybe she saw some kind of deer, catching a piece of meat that big must bring some kind of respect from the others back at the camp.

The forest is really amazing at this time of day. The sunlight reflects off of the wet trees and ground giving everything a sparkling look. The surrounding mountains manage to peek over the top of the trees, giving everything a grand sense of scale. In fact, you’re considering picking this town as your place of choice.

Why wouldn’t you? It has good company, good food and beer, and has an awesome natural environment to explore outside of the otherwise dense town. Gilda might not like the idea of you becoming her neighbour, (although that would mean inhabiting one of the houses next to hers, otherwise she’d probably just ignore you.)

You chuckle to yourself. You like Gilda. She’s a bit of a bitch, but you can tell she enjoys your company to some extent. A lot of the other guys at the bar were surprised when they saw you hanging with her. By their accounts she’d sooner punch a griffon in the balls than hang out with them. You suppose it’s your natural charm.

You’ve been walking for a while now, but you still don’t seem to be any closer to the edge of the forest or the camp. Have you been going the wrong way the entire time? You stop for a moment and look around. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of what direction the place actually is. Looking up again you try and spot a plume of smoke, they do have an open fire over there after all. You come up empty handed.

A rustling in the bushes catches your attention, you swing around to try and spot your stalker but see nothing of interest. You step towards a little bush, trying to not make any noise. Your hands shoot out and rustle the prickly bush, causing a little brown squirrel to flee. You jump back in shock and let out a little shout. That made you jump.

You shake your head and laugh at yourself. Getting scared at a little rodent?

A larger rustling, this time coming from the trees. You feel a little uneasy, but the guys at the camp said there really isn’t anything to be afraid of in this forest. You aren’t about to climb a tree to find out what’s up there. As your eyes scan around you, you spot a blob glowing softly. Is that one of those jackets?

Making sure to memorize where you’re standing you trek towards it, passing through more identical forest. Out in the middle of a smaller clearing one of the jackets is glowing softly, crumpled on the floor. Somebody has left it here.

“Very funny Gilda,” you shout, deducing the joke easily. “Come on! Don’t do this after you ditched me!” You pick up the fallen jacket and run the material between your fingers. You look around the area, behind the trees that line the clearing, in the brush, and you keep a close eye on the canopy. With a grunt you throw the thing back on the ground in frustration kicking up even more dust and leaving you hacking.

You don’t even have time to react as a weight hits your back and sends you face first into the ground. A burning sensation on your left arms indicates that somebody has just cut you with something. The weight hops off you. You groan and roll over to see the smirking face of a mirthful Gilda.

“Fuck you.”

“You wish,” she says swishing her tail. She picks the dirty jacket back up and slips it on. You hiss as you pull your hand away from your left arm, finding it covered in a light layer of blood.

“Gilda… you fucking cut me open,” you gasp, a throbbing pain running down your arm. What the hell is her problem? She couldn’t have done her little prank without causing you injury? For the first time since you arrived Gilda looks guilty for her actions and checks over the wound.

“I didn’t cut open anything major, but that’s going to need some stitches.”

Three long claw marks are running down your arm near the joint, they’re hard to see because of the blood. “If I pass out before we get to the hospital, you’re carrying me there.” You cradle the wound and stand up, Gilda taking off through the canopy before coming back down and leading the way back to the camp.

“You really need to be more careful Gilda, those things are sharp.” Gilda slows down to walk with you.

“Sorry dude, I just wanted to scare you a little bit. I didn’t pay enough attention to what I was doing,” she admits.

“It’s cool, as long as I don’t bleed to death. Was bringing me out here really just a set up for that? You could have hidden behind the sofa back at the house and jumped out at me from there.”

“Nah, I really wanted to bring you out here to see what we do. But after I chased after the rabbit I figured that it was a bit too fast paced for you to keep up with. The scare was just something I came up with at the last second.”

You’re careful to not get any blood on your clothing or the jacket. Eventually you decide to take them off. “Gilda, can you take this jacket off me, I don’t want to ruin it.” She nods and floats up behind you bringing the shirt with her.

It isn’t as embarrassing as you thought it would be, Gilda’s seen you shirtless before, but that was back in the summer when you first arrived. You’ve lost some weight since then, and you’ve generally been getting a lot more exercise thanks to Gilda. “Looking good dweeb,” she says poking your belly. You slap the talon away and start walking.

“For real, you look a lot better.”

“Good food, and it doesn’t help I have to run away from your vicious ass.”

Gilda hits you with her lion’s tail in response, the furry end tickling your naked back. You shiver at the sensation and try to get away, but Gilda has noticed your displeasure and repeats the process, over and over again. “For fucks sake Gilda I’m bleeding to death here, can we please get back to the camp?”

She gets the message and stops tickling you. “Spoilsport.”

You began to trail behind her slightly, suddenly feeling very woozy. “Whoa shit,” you mutter leaning against a nearby tree.

“You alright dweeb?”

“I feel like somebody just hit me over the head with a chair.” You rub the back of your head with your clean hand and wince as a thunderous headache makes itself known. You feel horribly ill all of a sudden, you hope she disinfected those claws before she attacked you.

“We’re nearly there now, come on, just a little more and we can get you looked at.”

You stumble after her, the strength in your legs failing you. Your tongue feels like lead in your mouth and you find yourself unable to call after her as she rushes ahead. You fall to a knee and try to clear your head, but it only makes the pain worse. You hear a muffled voice calling out in the distance before everything goes black.

---

You groan in pain as you awake. The smell of antiseptic and cheap plastic bedding fills your nostrils. She brought you to the hospital, she did have to carry you after all. You roll about on the bed. It’s extremely uncomfortable and your restless body wakes itself up as a result. You’re alone on the ward.

Your arm isn’t bandaged like you expected, but they’ve stitched up the claw marks. It’s kind of gross seeing the needles going through your skin like that. You decide to occupy yourself elsewhere before you vomit. You sit up on the bed and stretch, feeling very, very sore and stiff. Either you’ve been in this bed for a year, or whatever aggressive disease you caught is really fucking up your body.

You absentmindedly scratch at the palms of your hand. They feel very dry. You look down and see some of the skin peeling away, you must have done that while running after Gilda. You have a lot on your plate, but you still notice a slight blackening of the skin where those dry areas are. You hope that isn’t something else to add to your list of ailments.

You clap your hands together trying to get the dead skin off. The door opens and in walks a griffon wearing a goofy white doctor’s coat. He watches you for a moment, “What are you doing?” he asks while flipping through the chart at the end of the bed.

“I’ve got some dead skin on my hands, can’t get it off.”

A futile effort, you’re going to have to get a scrubber or something. You start picking at the dry skin while the doctor hums to himself. He nods and hooks the chart back onto the bed, circling around the stand face to face with you. “Could you open your mouth for me?”

You do so. He pulls out a little thermometer and places it on your tongue. “Looks normal, I suppose.” He pulls it away and dries it with a little cloth, placing it in another pocket. “Miss Gilda was very worried when she brought you in, could you give me a description of what happened for the records?” He pulls up a chair placed to the right of the bed and brings out a notepad and quill.

“Me and Gilda were out doing this hunting thing. We lost each other, but Gilda found me again and decided to play a prank on me. She put her vest on the ground and waited for me to find it, before jumping out and trying to scare me. She ended up bisecting my arm with her claw on accident.”

“Could you show me your arm?”

You show him your stitched arm. “Nothing too serious, you did lose quite a bit of blood though. What kind of symptoms did you have before you collapsed?”

“Sweating, nausea, wooziness, loss of strength…”

“Right, very typical of somebody who’s losing blood."

“That was pretty much it, I passed out and she dragged me all the way here.”

He smiles and laughs and the imagery and pockets the notepad, “Well there isn’t much else to say, you’ve got a clean bill of health as far as I’m concerned. Just try to take it easy for a few days while you recover, I’ll send a nurse in to bandage that for you.”

You thank him and he leaves the ward. You rub the wound with a hand and feel the stitching running through it, man you were lucky that Gilda was strong enough to bring you to the camp. She might have gotten some help from the others to bring you to the hospital.

Speaking of the devil, the yellow eyed lioness struts into the ward with a proud look about her. “Hold your applause, I know I’m amazing,” she boasted sitting on the doctor’s chair. “How’re you doing dweeb? Feeling okay?”

“It’s just a scratch, I’ll be fine. I just need to take it easy while I get my strength back.”

“So nothing unusual then?”

You punch her in the arm as she laughs at you. You’re not lazy! It’s just that you don’t really have a job. The monarchs have provided you with a small stipend as you search for a home, just enough to buy all of your essentials, or most of your essentials and lots of beer. A nurse clears her throat from the doorway and Gilda backs off to let her work.

The smaller griffon pulls out a white bandage, dips it in a small tub of water and efficiently wraps it around the injury. “You don’t need to change this or come back here, just take it off in two days and you should be fine. If there are any problems or complications, don’t be afraid to come back.”

She nods and hurries away from the room, she must be really busy. “Ready to get going?” Gilda says pulling you off the bed.

It’s nice to be back outside. Even if you were only in there for a short time, you never liked hospitals. You reach your arms up and stretch, cracking an arm. Gilda shivers next to you.

“This is for the tail thing, isn’t it?”

“Could be,” you tease. She’s looking intently at your hands. You hold them up and notice that the black spots have become more prominent.

“What’s up with your hands?”

“Probably fucked them up running after you, it’ll wash off,” you clap them together again and begin walking in no specific direction.
“So what do you wanna’ do now?”

You shrug and walk to the centre of town, where a small public park is located. It’s a little slice of nature right in the middle of the dense town, with trees, benches and a pond. It’s a good place to hang out when you’re not doing anything. You pass by several families having fun and older teenagers playing various sports on the grassy area.

You walk up and sit down on one of the wooden benches that watch over the pond. Gilda sits next to you and lies down on her stomach. Her tail wags happily behind her as she watches the sun move across the sky. You lazily hang you head from the back of the bench, giving yourself and upside down view of two griffons playing some frisbee type game.

They go out of focus, the nature filled park becoming a green blur. Sitting up you rub your eyes, but still everything is blurry and hard to see. “Uh fuck me,” you groan as a headache starts to come on as a result.

“What?”

“I can’t see shit.”

As soon as the words leave your mouth, everything comes back together. So much so that you’d argue that your vision has improved. Everything looks so much more detailed now, and it’s very, very strange to say the least. The individual pebbles that compose the distant roads now stand out individually, you try and blink and shake it away, but no matter where you look it’s the same story.

“What the fuck.”

“Seriously dude what’s up? Do we need to go back to the hospital?” You make eye contact, and she backs away in shock. “Whoa! What in Tartarus is wrong with your eyes?” You walk over to the pond and get on your knees, looking into the clear water. Sharp green slits look back, they almost look like…

Nah, that’s be silly.

You stand up and return to the bench. “Just what I wanted, more medical problems.”

“You want to go back? The doctor will still be there.”

“It’s fine, I just need to get some sleep.”

---

You roll underneath the sheets of the small bed. Drops of sweat roll down your overheating body. You haven’t been able to get to sleep, you have no idea how long you’ve been tossing and turning. If this keeps up you’re not going to get any sleep at all. Your hands start to itch again, and endless cycle of scratching and irritation.

You toss the covers from the bed and lie on your bed, panting. Something is seriously wrong. You shuffle and wince as a bump at the base of your spine makes contact with the rough bedding, that’s sensitive. You reach a shaky arm underneath yourself and feel the bump, it’s large, like a tumour. The lightest of touches causes you to gasp in pain, and your hand retreats back onto your midsection.

“This is a dream…” you repeat to yourself, “This is a dream…”

Your entire body quakes as you struggle to sit up. You have no strength in any part of your body making such a simple movement an absurdly difficult effort. In the darkness you hold a hand out in front of you face, seeing a piece of skin fall away, revealing a new black surface. You hurriedly hide them away from sight with a pillow and try to calm yourself.

You are falling apart.

It’s only now that you notice how fucked up you are. You’re completely bald, all of your body hair being left on the bed. Your hands have become black and harsh, with pointed tips at each finger. The bump at the base of your spine is joined by two more at the back of your chest.

Rolling off the bed you grunt and try to crawl to the door but to no avail. Now you’re stranded on the wooden floor as whatever horrible disease you’ve caught has its way with you. You shout out, your voice cracking as your body tenses up and renders you unable to move. Gilda didn’t hear.

A new coat of hair starts to cover your lower body, rising from the skin. Pins and needles run up and down your legs as a new thin layer of grey fur emerges. What the fuck is going on? It only gets worse from there as your feet cramp up and begin to change, your toes merging together to form three big ones. The fur spreads to them, and soft black pads of flesh form on the bottom of your new paws. It’s excruciatingly painful and leaves you with fresh tears in your new sharp green eyes.

The fur spreads over the bump at the base of your spine. Suddenly the lump begins to grow longer and longer, the new tube of flesh flailing as new nerves connect to your spine. A small tuft of black hair grows out of it like a blooming flower. Even amid the pain you can connect the dots, you’re turning into a griffon!

You yowl in pain as the other two lumps begin to push against your skin, pulsing and desiring to burst free from their restraints. You can no longer stand, so you’re forced to roll over as the horrible feeling of your skin stretching outwards reaches its climax. With another scream the thin layer of skin gives way, revealing two blood covered appendages that flap erratically.

You hear the beating of feat coming to the door, which swings open to reveal an angry looking Gilda. Her eyes widen, her anger forgotten as she feasts her eyes upon your mutant form. She’s left speechless, and stammers out half words as you continue to writhe in pure agony. It’s like somebody has poured gasoline into your veins and set it alight.

Your lips begin to harden, rendering them unable to make any more sound. They become black and callous, just like the new claws that tip the end of your hands. You groan as they extend out further than you expected to form a tightly sealed beak.

“Oh man, what should I do?” Gilda shouts, running in place as she freaks out.

There isn’t much she can do, a morbid mind replies. Having gotten over what’s happening, now you just want it to be over and done with. A prickly sensation of your chest and face tells you that another set of feathers have come in.

The invisible hand changing you, having done with the outside of your body, moves onto your legs and arms. They shrink down, becoming much shorter. Soon enough your stature is equal to many of the griffons you’ve befriended during your stay.

A new joint is formed between your knee and feet, giving you the distinctive bend that comes with having the legs of a lion. An unfortunate consequence is that it renders you unable to walk on two feet for long. Your chest follows closely behind, it also shrinking to match the rest of your body. Organs compress and rearrange themselves, a new purpose being assigned to some of them.

Your testicles don’t escape unscathed either, now covered in a spattering of the same light grey fur. They swell slightly with your heartbeat, increasing to the size of a small orange each. Your penis presses into your body slightly before being covered by a furry sheathe. Internally the changes continue, your penis’ distinct mushroom head sharpening into a tapered point, while a fat bulge swells at the base, designed to hold a female in place during intercourse.

Contrary to what you might expect, it grows in size to a whopping eight inches, with impressive girth to match. Your new four legged stature means that there’s less need for smaller genitals. However the potential applications for this are the furthest thing from your mind as your sweaty body rubs against the harsh wooden floor.

The pain begins to subside, but you’ve been thoroughly exhausted by the experience. You slowly drift off to sleep once more as Gilda appraises your new body. Gilda decides that it isn’t worth dealing with so late, and she tries to heft you back onto the bed by lifting you via your armpits. Her muscles strain with exertion, but you remain firmly on the ground.

“It’s too late for this shit,” she grumbles, leaving your room and going back to her own.